Coming Out Headaches

I'm thinking about being "out" and what the hell I should be out as. I realize that on campus, people from last fall know I am asexual because I lead a discussion on it (which was only attended by 2 people, btu which provoked consistent individual inquiries). Now that I am back, many people notice that I display a lot of interest in transgender topics and I am open about being involved in several related projects. However, newbies (especially freshmen who met me at pride) have incessantly felt the need to refer to me as a dyke, carpet-muncher, and bulldagger (in a jestful, accepting way but in a none the less something-I-don't think-of-myself-as-kind-of-way ).

I'm thinking about coming out to my mother and father, though its been months since I talked to either of them, and I have no idea what to come out as. I feel gender is more important to who I am than any kind of identity based on romantic relationships. I think about gender in every interaction I have, whereas I've has three crushes in the last three years. The catch is that I do have a girlfriend now, and I feel like I have to choose between acknowledging how much I care about her and anyone thinking of me in any of the ways I think of myself. I feel like her existence makes dyke trump trans in the public eye. I feel like our relationship undermines my claim to asexuality. It's as if she is everyone's confirmation that everything they assume about me has always been right. Now, how much are people really thinking about my sexual identity and gender identity? It's not that I think they are, it's more that there are a lot of unspoken assumptions that are coming into play more directly as I'm being more open. I feel like I'm on the defensive with this whole coming out process, doing damage control, dispelling myths, and disarming rumors. As I sit down to script out another conversation with a friend about it all, I can't escape the nagging condemnation that I make things this complicated on purpose...

A Quirky Fairytale Part 1

There was once a young Genderqueer who had avoided the pitfalls of romance rigorously and successfully all of hir life. A believer in love but a cynic to romantic relationships (surely the sweet sounds of adoration have a thousand times more range than this single octave), ze could oft be heard sneering at newly weds and scoffing at those who would try to court hir.

Many a year had ze spent enjoying d&d free (d&d = drug and drama, not dungeons and dragons) misadventures punctuated by moments of friendly though transient intimacy when ze moved to the “lesbian capital of the east coast.

Ze spent months alone in a castle-like estate amid all manner of vagrancy and partyers. Ze was in search of employment that never seemed to manifest, in search of stability that eluded hir, in search of something ze had no point of reference for, and it was with a predictable yet all the more virulent strain of frustration that. Ze was afflicted.

When the squalor of the house seemed overwhelming, ze cleaned. Ze did most anything ze could to avoid leaving until one sweltering mid-morning ze woke to an anxious cross-between-a-squeal-and-howl that wouldn’t stop. The neurotic canine lept around in the filthy of the living room, rubbing his head manically into the clothes strewn about the decaying surplus of salvaged furniture. Driven uncharacteristically on edge, ze packed hir books, sketchpad, and laptop and took off.

In search of a path, ze stumbled into a SesamePride planning meeting. Others may have stayed because the event was a first, with all the attendant excitment and intrigue, but ze stayed because it was something to find direction in, something to get lost in, something to get found in…